Processing compound words: Evidence from synaesthesia

Mankin, Jennifer L.; Thompson, C. J.; Branigan, Holly P.; Simner, Julia

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.01.007

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…In a prior study investigating synaesthetic colours in response to compound words (e.g., rainbow = rain + bow) in 19 synaesthetes, it was found that whether a single, unitary colour was experienced for the word, versus two colours, one for each of the subparts of the compound word, depended on the frequency of the compound word. That is, frequently-used compound words, elicited a single synaesthetic colours (Mankin, Thompson, Branigan, & Simner, 2016). This is evidence that it is not invariably the case that lexical-colour synaesthesia can be explained via a conglomeration or competition of component pairings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Language use statistics and prototypical grapheme colours predict synaesthetes' and non-synaesthetes' word-colour associations

Goodhew

Kidd

2017

Acta Psychologica

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Synaesthesia is the neuropsychological phenomenon in which individuals experience unusual sensory associations, such as experiencing particular colours in response to particular words. While it was once thought the particular pairings between stimuli were arbitrary and idiosyncratic to particular synaesthetes, there is now growing evidence for a systematic psycholinguistic basis to the associations. Here we sought to assess the explanatory value of quantifiable lexical association measures (via latent semantic analysis; LSA) in the pairings observed between words and colours in synaesthesia. To test this, we had synaesthetes report the particular colours they experienced in response to given concept words, and found that language association between the concept and colour words provided highly reliable predictors of the reported pairings. These results provide convergent evidence for a psycholinguistic basis to synaesthesia, but in a novel way, showing that exposure to particular patterns of associations in language can predict the formation of particular synaesthetic lexical-colour associations. Consistent with previous research, the prototypical synaesthetic colour for the first letter of the word also played a role in shaping the colour for the whole word, and this effect also interacted with language association, such that the effect of the colour for the first letter was stronger as the association between the concept word and the colour word in language increased. Moreover, when a group of non-synaesthetes were asked what colours they associated with the concept words, they produced very similar reports to the synaesthetes that were predicted by both language association and prototypical synaesthetic colour for the first letter of the word. This points to a shared linguistic experience generating the associations for both groups.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Language use statistics and prototypical grapheme colours predict synaesthetes' and non-synaesthetes' word-colour associations

Goodhew

Kidd

2017

Acta Psychologica

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“…'download') consist of one or two lexical entries. One approach to answering this question is to ask whether synaesthetes are more likely to have one or two colours for these words, relative to non-compound words matched for length and other psycholinguistic properties [85]. Behind this approach is a tacit assumption that synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes represent compound words in similar ways (i.e.…”

Section: What Does Synaesthesia Reveal About the Normal Mind And Brain?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Synaesthesia: a distinct entity that is an emergent feature of adaptive neurocognitive differences

Ward

2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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In this article, I argue that synaesthesia is not on a continuum with neurotypical cognition. Synaesthesia is special: its phenomenology is different; it has distinct causal mechanisms; and is likely to be associated with a distinct neurocognitive profile. However, not all synaesthetes are the same, and there are quantifiable differences between them. In particular, the number of types of synaesthesia that a person possesses is a hitherto underappreciated variable that predicts cognitive differences along a number of dimensions (mental imagery, sensory sensitivity, attention to detail). Together with enhanced memory, this may constitute a common core of abilities that may go some way to explaining why synaesthesia might have evolved. I argue that the direct benefits of synaesthesia are generally limited (i.e. the synaesthetic associations do not convey novel information about the world) but, nevertheless, synaesthesia may develop due to other adaptive functions (e.g. perceptual ability, memory) that necessitate changes to design features of the brain. The article concludes by suggesting that synaesthesia forces us to reconsider what we mean by a ‘normal’ mind/brain. There may be multiple ‘normal’ neurodevelopmental trajectories that can sculpt very different ways of experiencing the world, of which synaesthesia is but one. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Bridging senses: novel insights from synaesthesia’.

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“…This predicts a processing difference between monomorphemic and compound words. Third, the interaction model (e.g., Caramazza, Laudanna & Romani, 1988;Taft, 1994), which has recently gained increasing support (e.g., MacGregor & Shtyrov, 2013;Mankin, Thompson, Branigan & Simner, 2016;Nefs, Assink & Knuijt, 2003), assumes that compounds can be stored and accessed as whole words or through their constituent morphemes based on a number of variables, including the frequency of the compound words and their constituents, their orthographic representation (i.e., spelled as one word airport or as two words post office) and their semantic transparency. It will be interesting to test how similar/different monomorphemic and compound words behave in the current study to test the predictions of these models.…”

Section: Theoretical Models Of the Bilingual Lexiconmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does the Morphological Structure of L1 Equivalents Influence the Processing of L2 Words? Evidence from Arabic-English Bilinguals

et al. 2020

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Objective. The current study aims at investigating if the morphological structure of the first language (L1) equivalents affects the processing of second language (L2) words. Materials & Methods. To this end, 400 Arabic-English bilinguals of two levels of language proficiency completed a free recall task and a discrete word association task in their L2. The stimuli represented cases of lexical matches and mismatches. Results. The results of the free recall task showed a facilitation effect for lexical matching in one comparison for the participants with lower proficiency while lexical matching led to an inhibitory effect in two comparisons for the participants with higher proficiency. Additionally, the participants with higher proficiency generally recalled more words than the participants with lower proficiency, and recalled monomorphemic words significantly differently than multi-morphemic words in one comparison. As for the results of the word association task, they failed to reveal significance for word type or language proficiency when association strength was considered. Only when the number of associations was considered, a facilitatory effect for lexical matching was observed in one comparison among the participants with lower proficiency. Conclusions. The results generally support the claim that L2 learners exhibit sensitivity to the morphological structure of L1 words. The results also lend support to the interaction model of morphological processing and the bilingual lexicon models that highlight the influence of language proficiency on language processing.

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Processing compound words: Evidence from synaesthesia

Cited by 14 publications

References 59 publications

Language use statistics and prototypical grapheme colours predict synaesthetes' and non-synaesthetes' word-colour associations

Language use statistics and prototypical grapheme colours predict synaesthetes' and non-synaesthetes' word-colour associations

Synaesthesia: a distinct entity that is an emergent feature of adaptive neurocognitive differences

Does the Morphological Structure of L1 Equivalents Influence the Processing of L2 Words? Evidence from Arabic-English Bilinguals

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